2.05.2011

Wyatt, month 6

Dear Wyatt,

Half a year old...HALF A YEAR OLD! You’ve got to be freaking kidding me! It just doesn’t even seem possible, my man. You are growing up way too fast (and actually, you are almost 7 months old by the time I’m posting this...good thing I keep detailed notes so I can remember what happened during your 6th month!).

Your sixth month was a big one (but then again, aren’t they all?). You celebrated Christmas and New Year’s...but really they were just like any other day for you, for the most part. We made a conscious decision to not really buy you any Christmas gifts, figuring that (a) you are too young to remember this, (b) your grandparents and the rest of the family will make up for any gift “deficiencies” you might experience and (c) if you need something at this stage, we buy it for you and give it to you right away. So anyway, your Christmas wasn’t all that crazy, and we actually didn’t even get our tree up until Christmas Eve (shame on us!). But what was special about it is that your Grandpa Phil and Grandma Barb came up to stay with us, so you got lots of hugs and kisses and cuddles from your grandparents...which is the best gift of all! And on New Year’s Eve, I’m pretty sure we were all asleep well before it even hit 10:00pm. We’re such party animals!

One big thing on Christmas day was that you had your first solid food! You tried sweet potatoes, then 4 days later you had green beans and 4 days after that you had avocado. The verdict? You’ve absolutely loved everything you’ve tried! It helps that I blend it all with breast milk, so the flavor is somewhat familiar to you. I really love making your food, and I intend to keep it up and hopefully avoid jarred baby food (not that there’s anything wrong with people who use the jarred stuff, we’re just hoping to avoid it). We haven’t given you any rice cereal yet, since there really isn’t a lot of nutritional content to rice cereal and we don’t feel a need to bulk up any of your meals as you are gaining weight just fine.

During your sixth month you started sitting up REALLY well! You can go for so long without toppling over, it’s pretty awesome. You haven’t pulled yourself up to a sit yet, but I’m sure that will come with time. You started reaching out to be held and exhibited a bit of separation anxiety this month also. It breaks my heart to see you cry if I’m leaving you, but it’s also nice to know that you definitely recognize and prefer mama and papa over anyone else. :) You have a very strong grab reflex, you’ve pulled yourself up to standing (with assistance) a few times, and you love playing 52-Card Pick-Up (i.e., purposefully dropping your toys so that we have to pick them up...over and over and over again).

While your grandparents were here over Christmas, we went out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse and you sat in a restaurant highchair like a big boy for the first time. You did really well, and lasted through almost our entire dinner before wanting to be held!

We listen to a lot of music in our house, and hold you while we dance and sing a lot too. There have been a few times when we see you moving to the beat of a song, and we hope that you get a good sense of musicality from these early days.

You lasted about 2 ½ weeks in daycare before getting your first cold, and spent the last few weeks of the year (and the first few weeks of 2011 since then) with a sniffly nose and a persistent cough. We knew that starting you in daycare in the winter would mean you’d be exposed to lots of germs from sick kids, but since there’s nothing we can do about it we just make sure to give you your daily vitamin D supplement and make sure mama is getting plenty of vitamin D and C and eating a balanced diet so that we can give you a good fighting chance at successfully and quickly battling the germ army that descends on daycare every day. So far so good, as you haven’t been too terribly sick. The worst it’s gotten is a few nights in a row of one of us sleeping with you on the couch to keep you semi-upright to help your breathing, so that’s not too bad.

Your official 6-month stats from your appointment with Dr. Beth are as follows: 29 inches tall (100th percentile) and 19 lbs 3 oz (90th percentile). We like to say that you’re setting your own growth chart, but your body is very proportionate so you don’t really look like that big of a kid. You are still a very happy, good-natured, smiley baby, and we just constantly shake our head at our good fortune to have such a wonderful baby. We truly feel blessed to be your parents, Wyatt. We love you to bits and pieces, to the moon and back, and every other way to describe it. You are our best accomplishment!

As always, here is a link to your continuing photo album on Flickr. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t take many pictures of you this month. Bad mama! I take lots of iPhone pictures when I visit you at daycare during lunch, but I have really fallen off the wagon when it comes to taking pictures with the good camera. I’ll get better about that, I promise!

I love you, I love you, I love you. Please stay this cute, fun age for a while…okay??